Betty Wright’s new album is called The Movie. But a better title might have been “The Multiplex,” or maybe “The Series.” Because Wright, the godmother of Miami music; gospel daughter of Overtown and Liberty City; friend, advisor, songwriter, coach and more to what seems like half the music industry, has lived enough stories for way more than one feature.

There was the first time she sang in a nightclub, in a teal dress with a sash, at all of 9 years old. The time she watched a man strangle his wife in the Liberty City housing project where she grew up. Her breakout national hit, Clean Up Woman, at age 17. Opening for James Brown. Writing soul and disco classics like Tonight’s the Night and Where is the Love? Opening for Bob Marley. Coaching Gloria Estefan and Jennifer Lopez.

One story Betty Wright doesn’t tell is how she learned to sing, because she can’t remember not singing.

“It was like eating food,” says Wright, 57, the youngest of seven children in a gospel-singing family. “We just sang. Mama said ‘sing’ and we sang.”

She keeps bursting into song during a long conversation at her home, soaring in a gospel she recorded with her family as a 2-year-old, raising goose bumps with the gutsy howl of Clean Up Woman. (“I just thought that song didn’t have any kind of range. I realized later people love those songs ’cause they can sing along with them.”)

Her sprawling house on the edge of Miami Shores overflows with the trappings of a packed life, shared with husband Noel Williams, the father of her five children. Gold records hang in one of two recording studios, with more stacked on the floor. One room is devoted to costumes, shoes and accessories, while her pink office bursts with files, papers and ruffled pink pillows.

Last year’s Christmas tree sits in a corner. Dozens of Wright’s abstract paintings adorn the walls, color-coordinated to match the furniture. Her mania for color extends to the bright blue reading glasses and nail polish she’s chosen to accessorize her elaborate teal and gold outfit, which she designed and made herself.

Spectacular as her four-octave instrument remains, Wright feels she has a wider calling as a teller of musical stories and teacher.

“I became a singer because it’s a birthright in my family,” she says. “I’m very called to communicate. But I don’t consider myself like an Aretha or any of those people. I just have the tenacity to do it.”

Survival songs

Her tenacity comes through on Betty Wright: The Movie, her first solo album in a decade, which is filled with songs of struggle and survival. On Look Around (Be A Man) and Real Woman (with Snoop Dogg) she urges guys to grow up, while You and Me, Leroy is a plea to her man to stay strong and keep the love during hard times. Go! is a wrenching account of domestic violence, which Wright says she’s seen far too much of.

“It will be in my book … when I will feel comfortable enough to share why I wrote this song,” she says. “… I got secrets I’ve been keeping since first grade, who took the money in the Coca-Cola can from our little club. And I’ll keep that till glory.”